The BC premier’s suggestion that “quick wins” can be gained by correcting “historical wrongs” done to ethnic communities will be familiar to any watcher of federal politics.

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark is being criticized for plans to use public resources to research and communicate the Liberals’ vote-seeking messages to ethnic audiences.

By:Natalie Brender Published on Mon Mar 04 2013

Facing demands to resign following a leaked memo detailing her government’s plans for winning over ethnic voters to the provincial Liberal party, British Columbia Premier Christy Clark is embroiled in a mess that has elements quite familiar to watchers of federal politics.

Unsurprisingly, the memo in question is being condemned for its plans to use public resources to research and communicate the Liberals’ vote-seeking messages to ethnic audiences. It’s a line-crossing not wholly different in kind than the nearly $750,000 spent by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration on monitoring Minister Jason Kenney’s image in ethnic media over three years (including at partisan events during the 2011 election campaign).

Somewhat more surprising, however, is the uproar over the memo’s proposed actions. The document suggests that electoral “quick wins” could be gained by correcting “historical wrongs” done to ethnic communities – along the lines of the apology the BC government offered in 2008 for the Komagata Maru incident, in which a ship carrying more than 350 passengers was forced to return to India in 1914 after a two-month stalemate in Vancouver’s harbour. It also calls for communication tactics that include the use of ethnic spokespeople and ‘validators’ to write letters to newspapers and voice support on radio call-in shows.

In a rich irony, the memo itself warns that the ethnic outreach strategy it recommends might appear as ‘time-limited pandering” and “opportunist” – and now it’s being seen as just that. But the responses from BC ethnic communities go beyond those epithets into the realm of moral hurt and outrage. A leader in the Chinese-Canadian community (which has long sought more provincial recognition of past injustices to Chinese immigrants) has denounced the memo as an “immoral” and disrespectful effort to “manipulate” ethnic communities. Within the Indo-Canadian community, the president of the Komagata Maru Heritage Society is questioning the sincerity of the provincial government’s apology for that incident.

The moral outrage expressed in those words may come as a shock to Ontarians by now accustomed to seeing the Harper government’s relentless courting of ethnic voters through all manner of apologies, commemorations, festive appearances and the like. Do BC voters have a profounder expectation of sincere politics out by the Pacific? Wouldn’t even moderately worldly ethnic groups be naïve not to share a degree of cynicism about governments’ motives in responding to their communities’ historical, religious or political causes?

There are ample grounds for cynicism in seeing this episode as part of a larger phenomenon that Susan Delacourt has described as a shift toward political marketing and consumer citizenship in Canada. If our democracy is increasingly one in which political parties seek votes in return for giving diverse demographic groups the “goodies” they want, then people shouldn’t be shocked to see crass marketing tactics being discussed by political parties. Historical apologies and trusted ethnic validators are just more goods and salespeople in the store aisle.

And even leaving partisan electoral motives aside, some cynicism may be in order about the whole notion of governmental apologies for past wrongs to minority groups. In a forthcoming paper, University of Victoria professor Matt James argues convincingly that such apologies and commemorations have become popular among Canadian governments because of their relative shallowness as political gestures. In the 1960s and 70s, he notes, governments engaged relatively deeply with minority communities to deal with systemic inequality and injustice, in the present as well as the past. By contrast, today’s apologies and commemorations are deliberately superficial and limited ways of addressing discrete historical wrongs. Saying “we’re sorry (or happy) for what happened to your people a century ago” demands little of any government beyond a few words or a modest event budget. It effectively compartmentalizes different ethnic groups’ agendas instead of addressing broader socio-economic and political issues affecting diverse groups in common. Seen in this comparative light, apologies for historical wrongs may not be a gesture that ethnic groups should value very highly at all.

But of course, those perspectives are not the whole story. It’s a credit to the (partial) health of Canada’s democracy that words spoken by political leaders evidently still do matter. Despite all the grounds for cynicism, some Canadians value governmental apologies as expressions of sincere respect and regret for past wrongdoing, and a collective commitment to a more just nation. Call it a salutary surprise – and a relief – that this is so.

Natalie Brender is a freelance journalist. Her column appears on thestar.com every Monday.

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